13 Constitution.” Among the illustrious names on the roll of that society is found that of La Fayette, whom the gentleman from North Carolina quoted as complimenting “the good sense of the American people, which enabled them wisely to settle all domestic differences”—the same La Fayette who said to Clarkson, as that philanthropist reports in a letter written not long before his death, “I would never have drawn my sword in the cause of America, if I could have conceived that thereby I was founding a land of slavery.” The gentleman from North Carolina presented a classification of abolitionists of the present day. I am not satisfied with it, eithef for precision or completeness, and will bespeak his patience while I propose a different. There are, in the first place, the abolitionists, strictly and commonly so called. Their specific distinction, as a body, is, that they urge a dissolution of the Federal Constitution and of the Union. With the gentleman on the other side who expressed his sentiments not long ago, they hold to the “sacred right of revolution.” He called it “the most sacred of all rights.” They attach to it a similar sanctity, though they would not prosecute the object in the way which I suppose he would think legitimate. They are, generally at least, non- resistants, and, most of them even rpfrain from voting, from scruples against giving even that support to a Government which they regard as implicated in so much wrong. With a late president of the college of South Carolina, they have “calculated the value of the Union,” and, as they do the sum, the Union turns out to cost too much. Among them are persons of the greatest purity of' life, and the most unselfish philanthropy. There are individuals of eminent abilities, of the highest culture, and of social connections the most esteemed. There are those who bear the great historical names of the North—names which one cannot read the story of the heroic periods of New England without continually meeting. I do not adopt their views in respect to disunion. I believe that there resides in the Constitution a sufficient recuperative’power, which, though smothered now? only requires proper effort to be brought into action. I reject utterly the doctrine which makes the distinguishing badge of that body. It was from them that those expressions proceeded which the gentleman quoted to the committee as having been “collated by Mr. Nathan Appleton,” (page 14.) I regret that the gentleman should have thus brought forward his friend here. I cannot anticipate any occasion that will lead me to introduce in this place, for animadversion, the name of a private citizen. But the remarks of the gentleman make some notice from me proper, perhaps necessary. I will not proceed to it without premising, that he shall not say anything of his friend’s worth in private life that I will not cordially echo and confirm, perhaps with not less knowledge than his own. I cannot mistake the gentleman’s allusion, when he said that,, “because he [Mr. Appleton] expressed sentiments of regard for the Constitution and the Union, and a determination to abide by the laws as made, a torrent of obloquy was directed against him, so as to oblige him to publish a pamphlet in his defence.’-’ The gentleman read some of “the extracts which he [Mr.. Appleton] thought proper to make, to show the opinions of his assailants;” and then, in allusion to part of what he had quoted, he went on to say, “this last sentiment he shows has been adopted as a motto by many who do not profess to belong to the sect of abolitionists.” The gentleman must pardon me. I think his friend has not shown this. I think that he has not asserted it. If the gentleman understands that his friend has insinuated it, in relation to the writer of the pamphlet that drew out his own, on the gentleman be the responsibility of that interpretation. I entertain no such question here. But if the gentleman can further show that that insinuation is in fact made, then be the responsibility of such an insinuation upon its author. Certainly it would be a groundless one. The writer of the pamphlet which occasioned the publication by the gentleman’s friend, recorded distinctly his dissent from the doctrine of
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